The Young Section-Hand

by Burton Egbert Stevenson

There could be no doubting his eagerness, and as he looked at him, Jack smiled again.

“I don’t know what th’ road-master’ll say; mebbe he won’t let me keep you—I know he won’t if he sees you can’t do th’ work.” He looked down the line toward the gang, who stood leaning on their tools, enjoying the unusual privilege of a moment’s rest. “But I’m a man short,” he added. “I had t’ fire one this mornin’. We’ll try you, anyway. Put your coat an’ vest on th’ hand-car over there, git a pick an’ shovel an’ go up there with th’ gang.”

The boy flushed with pleasure and hurried away toward the hand-car, taking off his coat and vest as he went. He was back again in a moment, armed with the tools.

“Reddy, you show him the ropes!” shouted the foreman to one of the men.

“All roight, sir!” answered Reddy, easily distinguishable by the colour of his hair. “Come over here, youngster,” he added, as Allan joined the group. “Now you watch me, an’ you’ll soon be as good a section-man as they is on th’ road.”

The others laughed good-naturedly, then bent to work again, straightening the track. For this thing of steel and oak which bound the East to the West, and which, at first glance, would seem to have been built, like the Roman roads of old, to last for ever, was in constant need of attention. The great rails were of the toughest steel that forge could make; the ties were of the best and soundest oak; the gravel which served as ballast lay under them a foot deep and extended a foot on either side; the road-bed was as solid as the art of man could make it, pounded, tamped, and rolled, until it seemed strong as the eternal hills.

Yet it did not endure. For every hour of the day there swept over it, pounding at it, the monstrous freight locomotives, weighing a hundred tons, marvels of strength and power, pulling long lines of heavy cars, laden with coal and iron and grain, hurrying to give the Old World of the abundance of the New. And every hour, too, there flashed over it, at a speed almost lightning-like, the through passenger trains—the engines slim, supple, panting, thoroughbred; the lumbering mail-cars and day coaches; the luxurious Pullmans far heavier than any freight-car.

Day and night these thousands of tons hurled themselves along the rails, tearing at them at every curve, pounding them at every joint. Small wonder that they sometimes gave and spread, or broke short off, especially in zero weather, under the great pressure. Then, too, the thaws of spring loosened the road-bed and softened it; freshets undermined it and sapped the foundations of bridge and culvert. A red-hot cinder from the firebox, dropped on a wooden trestle, might start a disastrous blaze. And the least defect meant, perhaps, the loss of a score of lives.

So every day, over the whole length of the line, gangs of section-men went up and down, putting in a new tie here, replacing a defective rail there, tightening bolts, straightening the track, clearing the ditches along the road of water lest it seep under the road-bed and soften it; doing a thousand and one things that only a section-foreman would think needful. And all this that passengers and freight alike might go in safety to their destinations; that the road, at the year’s end, might declare a dividend.

There was nothing spectacular about their work; there was no romance connected with it. The passengers who caught a glimpse of them, as the train flashed by, never gave them a second thought. Their clothes were always tom and soiled; their hands hard and rough; the tugging at the bars had pulled their shoulders over into an ungraceful stoop; almost always they had the haggard, patient look of men who labour beyond their strength. But they were cogs in the great machine, just as important, in their way, as the big fly-wheel of a superintendent in the general offices; more important, sometimes, for the superintendent took frequent vacations, but the section work could not be neglected for a single day.